Every year, magazines and supplements are awash with recommendations for “Holiday Reads” (frequently the capital letters are obligatory). Some are worthy, some are trash, others are, thank the stars, somewhere in between but few, I suspect are ever actually read. And a jolly good thing too.And I’m bound to ask how anyone can believe that the words “holiday” and “read” actually go together in the first place. Can there be anything worse than lying on some ghastly stretch of orange grit, trying to keep the sun out of your eyes (isn’t it strange how, whichever way you face, the sun will always find a way to spoil your reading pleasure), trying not to get greasy sun cream and sweat all over the pages and trying to concentrate amidst all the distractions. Give me a cosy armchair and a glass of whisky of a winter’s evening any day. And if you aren't on a beach, then what the hell are doing wasting time reading? When I’m on holiday, I want to do things; see new places and have new experiences (or the same experiences somewhere else). I may well read voraciously on the actual journey but once I’m there, I’m happy to leave the literature in the bag. (I do not take a suitcase. That’s just mental). If I feel the desire to read, it means that the holiday is frankly is a bit dull.Of course, as many readers will know, there is something of the contrarian about me and I am one of those infuriating people who likes to make his own mind up when it comes to… well, pretty much everything, really and, n the case of holiday read recommendations, the cynic in me cannot but believe that the very concept is born of nothing more than the desire of the publishing industry to sell a few books. What? You thought that journalists were driven by the desire to put you in the way of something you might like? Well, you can believe that if it makes you feel better. Personally, the lists often seem to me to be far too similar for them to have been devised independently of one another.But if anything is worse that the recommendations of some hack, it’s the revelations we are forced to endure of what various worthies are packing for the summer. Frankly, anyone taking “Coalition”, by Mark Oaten (as David Miliband claimed to be, or “Jerusalem: The Biography” by Simon Sebag-Montifiore – David Cameron’s selection - doesn’t deserve a holiday at all. Personally, I’d love to see the look on the face of any companion who accompanies Alain de Botton on holiday, as he removes from his suitcase, Emile Durkheim’s “Suicide” and “The Anatomy of Melancholy” by Robert Burton.Perhaps some of you might let me know what you managed to get through over the summer and, possibly more importantly, why you bothered.

Holiday for me is sitting in a bar with a book, a John Collins and a beer in front of me... well it would be if those pesky kids didn't keep demanding my time.
Whatever, I find Ken Follet is always good, Bernard Cornwall is another. Light reading that keeps one engrossed but doesn't over-tax the brain, (especially after one John Collins too many...)